Imagination's a Bitch
by NaoNazo
Summary: Set after S3E5, "Bedtime Stories." Sam starts having dreams that lead him to a possible way out of Dean's deal. The catch? The answer lies in a ten-year-old kidnapping case... and the primary witness is not what she seems.
1. Chapter 1

They've barely played for ten minutes when Aaron throws his hands up and stomps away to the neighbor's yard. He mutters something about stupid girls wanting to play stupid imaginary games, but he still leaves his sweater for her to sit on. She can't get up to follow him because she's being a mermaid captured by an evil octopus and she needs to decide what color her tail is and the jewels in it before she can beat up the octopus and get gravely wounded while escaping. Also her skin gets itchy and red if she lays in the grass, so she stays on her brother's school sweater and runs her fingers over the prickly new-cut green blades of their front yard and thinks of colors. Mommy is inside but the front door is open and she can hear her voice raising and falling on the phone- no words she cares about, just the lilt like when Mommy reads long passages from the Hobbit at bedtime.

She looks at her legs stretched out on the sweater, bruise-blotchy knees bare below her soccer shorts, and blinks hard until she can almost see them as a tail. Imagination is making pictures for yourself, and she is going to be the most imaginative girl in kindergarten if it kills her. She'll show everyone her tail and they'll want to be her friend just like that.

She wants to go across the street to play with Aaron and the neighbor kids but she's not allowed to leave the yard by herself. Besides, one time she followed Aaron after he gave up playing and he said she was the ugliest girl in the world and never apologized, even when she cried. So she sits and blinks at her legs and listens to Mommy's voice from the house.

It's warm out, not hot like it was the day they went to the beach and days after her skin was peeling off like dried Elmer's glue, but hot enough she feels heavy and sleepy. Can't fall asleep on the grass, though, not unless she wants to be taking oatmeal baths for the next week.

She rolls to her feet and wraps the sweater around her waist in case she wants to sit down again, and something falls out of the big pocket on the front. Several round somethings that catch the light where they lie nestled in the grass like Easter Eggs. Four whole quarters. They're Aaron's, probably, but she's not too bothered by it. He can always get more from the change jar on the counter. No, these quarters are hers now, the price of his leaving to play with someone else. She scoops them up in one hand and jangles them about to hear their happy coin sound. Maybe if she hides them now, Aaron won't even remember they were there.

Just then the most perfect sound starts, far away but growing stronger, getting closer. She grins and closes a fist around the quarters. This is going to be even better than hiding the coins from Aaron. He'll never know, now..

She's running towards the sound, panting as she draws up to the white truck covered in stickers, and holds up the money so the man knows someone there. She's the second tallest girl in kindergarten, but she still has to bounce on her toes to see over the edge of the window, to see the ice cream man. He smiles down at her and she moves closer to the car to hand him the quarters.

"Are your parents around?" the ice cream man asks. She bounces a little higher to see the way his smile stays on his face when he talks, almost like it's a painted on clown smile. She's not supposed to talk to strangers, so she just shakes her head and rests her hand on the window sill so she can show the ice cream man the quarters.

"Kid, come a little closer and tell me what you want." He says, his voice with ups and downs like one of the characters in the TV shows Aaron says they're too old for. It's painted on like his smile, and she starts to step a little back, maybe run back to her own yard, when he winks at her and reaches back, back, back behind him and pulls out a fudgsicle. As soon as she sees it, she can taste it melting on her tongue, she wants it so much. He wraps his big hand around her coins, hand and all, and reaches out with the other, the fudgsicle. She puts up a hand for it but he keeps reaching until he touches her forehead with two cold fingers and whispers something that sounds slithery. She pulls her hand away and takes the fudgsicle with both, squinting up at the ice cream man. He winks again with no change in his smile and says, "See you soon!"

She runs back to her lawn and imagines how the mermaid got her fins away from the cold octopus and fought free. Half an hour later, when Aaron gets back, the fudgecicle is a smear of sticky chocolate on her cheeks. He gets mad at her for stealing his quarters because one of them had a state on it.

Several hours later, she and Aaron are tucked into bed in their adjoining rooms and Aaron is still angry enough at her that he doesn't talk to her through the doorway like usual.

The next morning, she is gone without a trace.

Five days later, she is back, but... Different.

Ten years later, Sam Winchester awakes from a dream about a cold room and a man with a painted on smile. He can still taste the bitter remnants of chocolate on the back of his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time he had the dream, he barely remembered it the next morning, when he and Dean were back on the road, the silence between them growing heavier, clinging in the air like a bad smell. Sam had to stop himself from breathing through his mouth, as if he could try to filter the words that go unsaid, letting them rest on his tongue so they wouldn't choke him when they reached his throat. He stopped himself because if he opened his mouth, he wasn't sure what would come out- more bitterness, more guilt, more desperation Dean didn't want to hear. He's so tired of hearing his words twisted into the whines of a little brother, of the chubby little boy he used to be before he grew up and learned that he'd have to save himself- not from the monsters or the darkness, but from the stupid, self-sacrificial crap Dean would pull to keep him safe. He tasted bile in his throat as he thought back to the kid he used to be, in the dark, kept safe at the expense of the only person who bothered to see him as something other than a soldier-to-be. Sam had thought they were a team, finally equal, after Jess- after he rejoined the hunt. But obviously, he'd been wrong about that.

He was so caught up trying to keep himself from just puking out all the hurt and frustration, he barely noticed when they stopped for lunch.

"C'mon Sammy, who spat in your coffee? That waitress has been eyeing you the entire time and you've barely even checked out her ass!" Dean's voice cut through Sam's fog, but did nothing to raise his spirits. The waitress, several tables away, turned around to give them both a dirty look before finishing taking her order. Sam groaned. Dean waggled his eyebrows, trying to get a rise out of his mopey younger brother. When that failed to yield more than a half-hearted glare, he rolled his eyes and huffed out a long-suffering sigh.

"Dude, lighten up. We just stopped a little not-dead girl from making everyone fairy-tale themselves to death. Life is good," Dean offered. Sam's glare could have stripped paint.

"I'm not doing this, Dean." He gritted out. "You can act like nothing's wrong, but I can't just sit here and make stupid jokes when you're DYING." He didn't care that his voice got louder and louder, and the people around them started rubbernecking, trying to stare into Dean and see what was killing him.

"Jeez, Sammy, way to tell the whole neighborhood," Dean hissed back, slapping some bills down on the table and leaving without a backward glance. Sam bit his lip hard and curled and uncurled his fists, which buzzed and tingled dizzily. When he was certain he could keep from decking Dean, he walked out to find his brother leaning sullenly against the Impala. And that was the end of any conversation for that day.

The second time he had the dream, he wasn't asleep. Technically, it might have been the third time he has the dream…. He had woken up with the same taste in his mouth, the same tune rattling around in his ears, like he had an animatronic bird singing on his shoulder. It sounded a little like "Turkey in the straw", which he would never admit to knowing because Dean still made fun of him for being in a choir at one of their schools in fifth grade. He found himself humming the ditty while getting ready to take the first shower, until a well-aimed pillow caught him in the back of the head and Dean growled at him to stop singing the ice cream song and making him hungry. When he said it, there was a flash in the back of Sam's mind of something familiar, something like a memory from childhood that might have been a scene from a movie he saw or something he felt or even a story he was told. But he chucked the pillow back and headed to the bathroom and the feeling was gone.

As always, he had to bend his knees in the shower so the stream of water had a chance to hit somewhere higher than the middle of his back. Sometimes he thinks back longingly to his dorm at Stanford, and later his apartment with Jessie- there was something about being able to stretch to his full height and lean back against a steady stream of water that made those few years feel more like a home than any of the places he and Dean had stayed at in their years of travel. Now he was back to slouching into showers and stooping into the Impala, as if by rounding down his shoulders and lessening his body language he could somehow fit back into the life he'd tried so hard to grow away from.

Sam was at the tricky stage of rinsing the suds from his hair- and precariously leaning back so he can keep the trickles from running down his forehead- when a resounding crash from the other room yanked him upright.

For a second he was sure something has cleaved the top of his head right off- all he could feel was a cold line of pain at the start of his scalp and the water beating down on his upturned face. For a second, he choked and floundered, trying to keep his feet grounded. Then, he was-

_shivering in the back of a car that used to mean happiness, dressed in little princess pajamas and clinging to Aaron's sweater like drowning men cling to life floats. The vehicle doesn't sing anymore, but growls and vibrates through her skin. Her eyes are swollen nearly shut with crying and her mouth is full of something that tastes dusty and dry and gross and she's been trying to keep herself from screaming since the scary man first told her that if she made one-little-peep, he'd go back and kill her family. The growling and vibrating stops and the scary man pulls her out of the car and into a dark building, takes her down down down a staircase and shoves her into a room at the very end of a gross-smelling hall. He closes the door before she can try and stand up and over the snick of the lock she can hear someone else breathing._

"Son of a bitch!" Dean's usual curse woke him from the-memory?vision?- so thoroughly he could hardly tell how long he'd been out of it. Sam took the time to finish his shower and squeeze most of the water from his hair before going out to check on his brother. Hunting together for most of his life had taught him early on to recognize when Dean swearing meant danger versus simple annoyance.

When he exited the bathroom, Dean was occupied with his duffle, pulling out a wrinkled shirt and jeans to change into. The motel's dusty black radio/alarm clock fusion was on the floor in pieces. Before Sam could do more than raise an eyebrow, Dean said," It was playing Hannah Montana."

"Miley Cyrus," Sam corrected, before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Dean turned around with an open-mouthed expression of pure glee, and started cackling when Sam groaned.

"No, no, no, please explain. College Boy listens to MILEY CYRUS? And you make fun of MY music?"

Sam looked away. In a flat tone, he said, "Jess had an old CD." Memories of his girlfriend dancing around their apartment, shaking her blond hair behind her goofily, clogged in the back of his throat. He cleared it and continued. "She used to play it during all-nighters to stay awake..." Dean nodded once and turned back to his duffle, too uncomfortable to say anything. Sighing, Sam pulled on some clothes and booted up his laptop, desperate for a hunt or something that might lead him to a way out of Dean's deal. Might as well wish for a unicorn while he was at it.

Somewhat whimsically, he typed "miracle cure" into the search bar and pressed enter. The first dozen results were some mystery novel by the same name and google's advice on how to take care of his nails, but after scrolling down a couple tens of results pages, he found a report in Nowheresville California of ten people being "miraculously" cured of fatal diseases. Dean started making impatient sounds from the other side of the room like he wanted to get going, but Sam scrolled through the article, half-squinting in concentration. Something about the story was oddly familiar, although he couldn't tell what. The "cured" people -he hesitated to call them victims, although that was how he and Dean usually referred to civilians who got mixed up in their kind of weird- were all different ages, and most were from different ethnicities and social backgrounds, it seemed. Not only that, but the "miracle" was from almost exactly ten years ago- and the reporter was speculating that it might have started happening again with a kid in the hospital making a deathbed recovery. Scrolling through the pictures, Sam sat arrested at the sight of the youngest non-victim. The face was unfamiliar, but something about his clothes...

Sam clicked on the picture, zooming in. The kid's sweater was a deep navy, but it was the words emblazoned across the front that caught his attention. When he read them, something seemed to grow a little cooler on the back of his neck. The dream came back to him in a blinding flash of fragmented images, adding to the pain of his throbbing forehead. He remembered without believing, for a moment, that he had been a little girl stuck in a room with someone else breathing behind him, that an ice cream truck man had grabbed her from her bed without anyone noticing, that the only thing she'd had to hold onto was her brother's school sweater. But most of all he remembered the name of the school, written in large goldenrod letters.

Sam shook his head to clear the images and immediately regretted it when his forehead throbbed in protest. He bookmarked the article and followed through on searching for sources, other reports from ten years ago, including ones for missing kids. Then, and only then, did he shut his laptop and turn to his brother to say, "Dean, I found us a hunt. It's in California."


	3. Chapter 3

It had taken exactly two phrases to convince Dean to check out the case in California. Sam wasn't proud to admit that those phrases included, "it's an hour to the nearest beach" and "we can hit Las Vegas on the way back." However, it was for a good cause. Sam stared ahead, pointedly ignoring the way Dean drummed on the wheel and lip-synched with his hair metal favorites, and admitted to himself that he'd probably feel bad about manipulating his older brother if it wasn't so damned easy to do.

And if it hadn't been the only thing about this case that WAS easy. It grated at Sam that he was having to research backwards. Normally, they found evidence of something strange, then went to talk to people who'd seen it and worked their way towards identifying the weird and kicking its ass. Currently, he had some idea of what the weird was- ice cream truck, kidnap, somehow related to his visions- but next to no evidence trail to follow to a logical conclusion. He couldn't pick apart the dream well enough to see where it might be leading, even though it had come to dominate his sleeping moments. As soon as he'd acknowledged that it had some basis in fact, it was like the dream was working overtime trying to cram itself into his skull- but it always stopped before he could learn anything new, just left him suspended in darkness with the sound of something breathing behind him.

After the second night of this, Sam had started chugging coffee. At least he could blame his jumpiness on the caffeine. In one more day, they'd hit the California border, and then it was a matter of hours until they reached the town. Sam wrinkled his nose and swallowed another slug of long-cold gritty motel coffee. The sooner they arrived, the sooner he'd be able to stop whatever was messing with his head.

God, his little brother was at it again. The kid had started burning the midnight oil before his voice even cracked, trying to keep his schoolwork and hunting in balance… And now that school was no longer an option, he buried himself in research and drank so much coffee he might as well just set up an IV and inject it directly into his bloodstream.

Not that Dean wasn't used to sleep-deprived Sam, but it was a real pain to drive cross-country with someone who only became more neurotic the more he avoided sleep. Still, it had its perks, he thought as he drummed his fingers on the wheel. Sleep-deprived Sammy led inevitably to napping-in-the-car Sammy, which always helped Dean's collection of blackmail photos on his phone. He had a funny hat held ready under the seat for just this contingency. With long years of bothering and damn near parenting under his belt, he spied the signs out of the corner of his eye- the way Sam's head slowly sunk to his chest before snapping back, the long blinks, clumsy hands- and smirked. One passenger for Dreamland, E.T.A. ten minutes or so.

"Look, can we switch something more rock and less roll?" Sam sniped.

"Shotgun shuts his cake hole," Dean reminded him, not bothering to hide his smug smile. " 'Samattar? Too snoozy to appreciate the greats?"

Sam attempted a level glare, which would have been more impressive if he'd been awake enough to focus his eyes properly. "It's not the greats… If…"

Dean raised an eyebrow and turned to the passenger seat, letting out a quiet cackle of victory when he saw his geek little brother had fallen asleep mid-sentence, hands still resting atop the case articles. Careful to check the road first, he dug under his seat with his left leg to knock the hat free, then snatched it up with his right hand. Ha- HA!

With care, he slid the pink conical Dummy hat until it jutted at an odd angle from Sam's head. Slowly, so slowly, he took his hand away and watched the hat balance on its own. After that it was child's play to pull his cell from his pocket and snap a picture.

After the click, his brother moaned a little in his sleep, his head sliding further towards center. The hat, miraculously, stayed in place.

"I'm disappointed in you, Sammy boy. Your reflexes are shit when you're asleep," Dean informed him in an undertone. As if in answer, Sam moaned again… Not a fun-sounding one, either. Twisting slightly in his seat, Dean noted the sweat standing out on Sam's face, the wrinkle between his eyebrows and- oh shit, Sam was CRYING. In his SLEEP.

"Damnit, Sam," Dean growled, pulling a hand from the wheel to grab his brother's shoulder.

"No… No. NOOOOOOO!" Sam woke with a roar that would have sent a less experienced driver spinning off the road in reflexive shock. As it was, Dean's hands clenched and the Impala jerked a little, but steadied out soon after. The pink Dummy hat bounced off the dash and into Sam's seat well, something that would have been funny in different circumstances. Blowing out a sigh as his lungs started working again, Dean rounded on Sam. "What the hell, man, you're having nightmares again?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, his little brother sighed. He sat there without speaking long enough for Dean to worry he'd actually gone to sleep again. So he socked Sam in the shoulder and repeated himself. "Hey. Nightmares?"

"…Yeah." Sam sighed, bringing both hands together and digging the heels against his eyes. Standard Sam behavior for when he was stalling for time.

"Clowns or midgets?" Dean prodded, readying to punch his brother's shoulder again. No chick flick moment rule aside, if his little brother was crying in his sleep, he needed to know what about. Sam gave a mirthless chuckle.

"Ice cream and lollipops," he shot back.

Dean was about to get on his case for it when something about the phrase started sounding familiar. Hadn't Sam snarked at him about bad dreams before? Back when they'd been chasing Bloody Mary, or something.

Sam looked at him with eyes so bloodshot they looked greener than ever and Dean GOT IT. No wonder. They were headed back to California. Sam's old apartment- the crumbling remains of it, anyway- was barely two hours away from the town they were headed for. He was having nightmares about Jess again.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Dean said in a rush. "But you can… If. Uh. You know…"

"If you're trying to give an 'I'm here for you' speech… Uh, thanks?" Sam cut him off before his increasingly embarrassing rumbling could infect them both with FEELINGS. "But seriously. I'm fine." Dean leveled a pointed look at the bags under Sam's eyes, but made no further comment on his brother's obvious lie. He'd said what he needed to say, the rest was up to Sam.

They spent the rest of the ride in the semi-silence of people who know each other too well to require full conversations. Each spoke only enough to keep Sam from falling asleep again.

In a certain town in California:

Shoving heels into sneakers with laces kept permanently double-knotted, she whistled for the dog to come. From across the house came the sound of an inherently lazy animal gradually working itself into a tizzy. She loped towards the sound, calling out in the unconscious singsong people use with domesticated animals and babies, "Haaaaarveeeey, wanna go for a WALK?"

A series of clicking and metallic jangling exploded towards her and resolved itself into a round mess of furry Rottweiler- something mix. She braced herself for impact and gave a preemptive order for "Down" but the dog barreled towards her without slowing, finally planting two paws on her stomach to huff happy dog breath into her face.

"Ugh. Phew! Love you too, Harvey, now DOWN," she choked out, air constricted by forty-some pounds per square inch of applied pressure. Harvey dropped to stand fully on the floor and promptly went bounding off again through the house. She followed to a stand near the front door with appropriate walk supplies and managed to get a pinch collar and leash firmly situated around the panting furry neck.

At the door, she turned back and bellowed, "Going for a walk!", which received a shrill, "Okay, have fun!" from somewhere in the back yard. Harvey, impatient to get out and roll in something truly foul, pulled her through the door and barely waited for her to lock up before springing forward to enjoy the California spring air.

Walking through the sprawling suburban neighborhood, the two were a convincing argument for the old adage of dogs coming to resemble their masters. There was a suggestion of puzzlement in the high brow and blobby eyebrows of the Rottweiler that found its match in the perpetually mobile expressions of his owner. Both shared heavy-lidded brown eyes with thick black lashes, and even the way the girl twitched her head to remove floppy bangs from her eyes resembled the dog's occasional ear-flapping head shakes.

As the pair progressed further from their house, the bouncy, boundless joy slowly seemed to drain from their bodies. Harvey's tail drooped, wagged weakly, then tucked itself between his legs. He stopped sniffing enthusiastically at the neighbors' yards and directed several pleading looks towards the holder of the leash.

Other than muttering that everything was "alright, boy, you're alright," she ignored the dog's protests, moving steadily in the direction it least wanted to go. The two passed an elementary school, a community center, a tiny public park- Harvey strained at his leash to enter the last, but finally allowed her to drag him away.

"Nearly there, boy," she murmured as they neared a weed-filled field. Harvey looked at the dry bed of tangled dead plant life, and to the scattered buildings beyond, letting out a low growl. She bent slightly to smooth his fur where it had begun to stand up along his back. "Nearly there."

They walked together through the scratchy plants and past the peeling sign declaring the buildings to be the site of a community remedial high school. Barely past the sign, there was a wooden bench, designed to make the experience of sitting and waiting as splintery and uncomfortable as possible.

She sat down on it anyway, and hunched over in her lap, like a person bracing against the cold. The charms from her bracelet clinked together musically- the first time they had made any noise since she left the house. She sat there for long enough that Harvey gave up being wary and hostile and simply flopped down at her feet, panting.

A breeze stirred through the field and brought the charms to chime loudly. She sighed and lifted her head, unsurprised to see another person leaning against the nearest building.

"Hey, Becks." She smiled, hand moving automatically to keep Harvey from leaping out at the newcomer in a decidedly unfriendly manner. "Long time no see."

"Ray." 'Becks' raised an eyebrow at the dog, but pushed herself off the wall and sat next to her. "He didn't used to hate me this much," she remarked.

"Yeah, maybe he doesn't like your new perfume?" 'Ray' responded. Becks shot her a 'taking none of your B.S. today' look, but reluctantly laughed. "You… doing okay?" Ray asked, reaching a hand to Becks's forehead. She sat back away from the hand.

"You'd know. Just tell me you've found something to help." Her voice came out flat. Ray winced a little.

"I think I found someone? They're coming tomorrow," she offered.

"When you say found-"

Ray's answering smile was sheepish. "They had some help deciding to come." Becks sighed. "I didn't force anything! Just gave a bit of a push, that's all."

"… And when you say 'someone'?" Becks prodded.

"The only kind of people who would help people like us," Ray finished. Becks let out a guffaw that startled Harvey into barking furiously.

"Oh, shit. We're actually gonna die, aren't we?"

"Easy for you to say," Ray quipped. The two stared at each other for a second, then collapsed in helpless giggles while the dog continued to bark.


	4. Chapter 4

"Aaaaagh, we're finally here! Hurry up and grab us a room, I have to piss like a racehorse." Dean tossed the wallet with their current card to Sam and hopped out of the driver's seat to stretch out his back. Sam took it with no more than a slight deepening of his resting bitch face, which either meant he was in a better mood or that he was too busy being a broody bastard to simultaneously fulfill his role as annoying little brother. Dean shook his head to himself, wincing as he heard his neck pop. Long car rides were hell on the joints.

He should probably stop using that phrase. It lost its meaning as an expression when you were literally going to hell in less than a year. Some days Dean just wanted to strap his brother safely in the passenger seat and drive them both away from the (again, literal) demons chasing them. He figured that, more than hunting, was what had kept them moving when they were growing up- there was something in the Winchester blood that only settled when they were on the road, all the home and family they'd ever have tucked in one vintage, beautiful car.

"You and me against the rest of the world, Baby," he crooned, patting her frame lovingly. Behind him, a throat cleared. Somehow his little brother could not say a word and STILL sound like a prissy bitch.

"Save it, Sam. Where's the room?" he growled.

"Uh… Just around the corner," Sam responded. "And, uh…" He handed a tiny rainbow flag on a toothpick to Dean, who looked at it uncomprehendingly. "The owner wanted to be sure to wish us a happy Pride weekend."

Dean wrinkled his eyebrows. "He wanted to wish US a happy Pride or he wanted to wish YOU a happy Pride?"

Sam smiled uncomfortably. "He offered to give us a king bed for half the price, in honor of the occasion."

"Son of a bitch! That's it, you need to cut your hair." Dean gestured at Sam with the flag, waving it wildly. "It's the only way people will stop seeing us as a gay couple." Sam raised an eyebrow at him.

"That's not a very Pride weekend attitude," he remarked, deadpan. Dean glowered at him, mimicking back in a high voice.

"That's not a very Pride weekend- shut up and point me to the bathroom, bitch," he ordered.

"Jerk," Sam shot back, tossing him the keycard. Dean plucked it out of the air and booked it for the room. With nothing better to do, Sam grabbed both their duffels from the back seat and carried them into the room after his brother.

There was no mistaking that this was a California motel. The wallpaper and generic pictures tacked to it were beach-themed. There was even a California license plate above each of the twin beds. At least the bedcovers had escaped the beach theme, by virtue of being a timid, watery blue. Sam tossed Dean's duffel on the bed nearest the door and set his own more gently under the window-he always carried the laptop with his stuff. With a sigh, he toed off his shoes to lay flat on the bed for a minute. The mattress seemed to pull out the kinks in his spine, and he was at the level of tired where he could feel his bones dragging with every breath. Whatever. In a minute, Dean would come barreling in from the bathroom and drag him out somewhere to grab a meal. Any…. minute…now…

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Dean splashed his face with water and glanced around the bathroom. It was, all in all, pretty typical motel fare- toilet too close to the sink, which was too close to the shower, and everything was made for someone about a foot shorter. But it had enough towels laid out and the shower curtain didn't have anyone else's hair on it or smell like mold, so to him it looked luxurious. It even had little complimentary shampoos in the tub and they came with a friggin' double action exfoliating/moisturizing body wash. California, man. What it lacked in decent grease food it made up for in bath products.

And, if he was very lucky later this week, frisky bikini babes. Maybe even twins.

Dean gave himself a cocky grin in the mirror just because he could and winked before exiting the room. Those chicks wouldn't know what hit them.

He swaggered into the room, all ready to get Sammy and see if they could find a decent Mexican place nearby, but a light snore stopped him in his tracks before he'd more than passed the threshold.

Nightmares or no nightmares, it had been a while since Sam had been tired enough to wipe out on a motel bed without even taking his jacket off. Sammy'd proudly outgrown naps when he was five (partially due to Dean's complete lack of interest in bedtime stories) and still maintained that only the weak slept when the sun was up. With a feeling of brotherly charity, Dean walked to the window to close the curtain, set the alarm for half an hour and set himself up to clean his favorite pistol. If letting Sam power-nap nows might help his chances of getting the obsessive nerd to take a night off and be a halfway decent wingman when this was all over, then Dean would take that chance. He'd even refrain from teasing the kid _too_ badly about napping like a kindergartner.

While he was waiting, he might even take his own glance at Sam's research for their case.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

He was staring at a mirror and the girl in the reflection was refusing to meet his eyes. At first he got the impression that she was muttering to herself, something he couldn't hear, but then he saw the way she kept looking over her shoulder. The glances softened her face, wrinkled her brows, like she was fondly irritated at whoever was sitting next to her. Finally, he could sort of make out what she was saying.

"-NOT like the last time, I wasn't trying to send real-time images. Memories are easier. I can do them in my sleep!" Her voice was thin, not in the way people are thin, but in the way of fabric worn enough that wind easily goes through it.

Pause, rolled eyes. "They're inlaid, you just let 'em loop! Now shhh! I can't get distracted." She frowned, squeezed her eyes shut and then blinked a few times. Finally, she looked directly at him and whispered, "Showtime."

"Can… You… Hear… Me?" she enunciated, voice pitched like someone trying to project by tightening every muscle from the throat to the lower intestine. It didn't sound thin anymore.

"What's going on?" he asked. Or tried to ask. Every syllable that left his mouth seemed to twist and melt like soft-serve ice-cream from an overheated machine.

"You won't be too good at talking here. It took me ages and I still don't know what I'm doing. We don't have much time, so just nod and shake your head." He raised an eyebrow at that. "Or do that, that works too." The edges of the mirror were blurry, somehow. He reached out to touch, partially to see if his hands could still move. Everything felt slow, stretched… and no matter how he reached, he couldn't touch the mirror directly in front of him.

"Okay, that's good, good effort, now if you could just direct your attention to me for a second…" The girl hadn't stopped staring. She hadn't blinked once. He grudgingly nodded.

"Thanks. Now listen up." The edges of the mirror faded faster, swirling into something that couldn't reflect anything. She widened her eyes; Sam's were starting to water in sympathy.

"There's a monster we need you to kill," she ground out. When she seemed to be waiting for something, Sam nodded. "It's got a place somewhere with an underground compartment." Nod. "It'll be something to do with kids." Nod.

She leaned forward, spitting out the last statement with an unconscious snarl. "You have to kill it with fire." Without waiting for his nod, she lifted a fist filled with blue material and pressed it against the mirror. With barely a glance at the goldenrod letters on its front, Sam knew it was the sweater from the dream.

"This is the key. Remember this," she gritted out, beginning to squint. There was something wrong…. Her face or her eyes or her nose were starting to blank out. He couldn't see what parts were gone exactly, just that she was becoming steadily less face-like. The part of her that still looked somewhat like lips forced out, "Don't… Trust… Family…" and finally melded into the rest of the vagueness, which simply disappeared.

He was staring into a mirror and no one was looking back.


	5. Chapter 5

"Gah… Shitshitshitshitshit," she chanted somewhat nasally, pinching the end of her nose while scrabbling for a tissue with the other hand. Becks shoved the box nearer and peered at her, lips pressed together.

"You okay?"

Ray clenched the tissue against both nostrils and nodded carefully, breathing through her mouth. "Nthis happends," she forced out, the blocked airway making her tongue sound heavy. Becks plucked out another tissue for her, but Ray moved off her chair to sit on the bathroom counter and lean forward. WIth her head between her knees, she muttered, "I hate blood."

"Might want to stop the possibly brain-damaging experiments, then," Becks suggested, nodding at the mirror. Even knowing what Ray could do, it had been trippy seeing a man take shape in the reflection, just like that. He hadn't seemed entirely with it, but she supposed that was fair for someone who was being contacted through their dreams. "You gonna actually try and meet him," she asked, "or just keep up the Kenobi guidance from afar?"

"I haven't seen Star Wars any more than you have, but I'm pretty sure you just misused that reference." Ray took the tissue away to speak, wincing as she did. "HATE blood," she muttered, replacing the tissue and pressing hard. Then she seemed to recall that Becks had actually been asking a question.

Shifting in her hunched position so she could meet her friend's eyes, Ray shrugged awkwardly. "Don't think it's the best idea to meet up, but if they end up believing the wrong reports, I'm gonna have to step in." There was only a hint of nasal in her voice. "Ah… I think it's done. Come on, I need to get the taste out of my mouth before I hurl."

Becks trailed behind, ignoring the way Harvey growled as they passed him on the way to the kitchen. Ray got out a glass and poured herself a lemonade from the ready-made pitcher, then slumped against the stovetop to drink it. Becks walked from the sink to the counter and back, spinning gracefully with each pass. She paced like someone who had learned dramatic walking from musical theater camp.

"You gonna come with me to volunteering today?" Ray asked. "Some of the kids really miss you."

"Nah, I'm…" Becks spun again and sighed. "That would be a bad idea for so many reasons." Ray nodded and set her drink down with a cool click.

"Okay… But if the hunters show up there I'll need to call and let you know."

"I'll stay by the phone," Becks stated. Ray pulled a face but nodded. She swiped a hand under her nose like she couldn't believe it had stopped bleeding.

"And you'll stay here until I have to leave?" she prodded.

"Well, yeah, unless-" The steady creak of the garage door lifting interjected. "-your brother comes home. Shit."

"We can go back to my room?" Ray offered, but Becks had already whirled her way out of the room, gone without a trace. "Aaaalright." Ray picked her drink up again just as Aaron walked in from the garage, covered in sweat and with traces of mud on his soccer shorts. His shirt blared rainbow tie-dye.

"Hey, Rachel, happy Pride," he greeted her. "Where's your rainbow?"

"Oh, hiding behind some clouds," she answered vaguely. Aaron raised an eyebrow, but let it go.

"If you want to go to the parade, you can tag along with me and some friends for a bit," he offered.

"Yeah, wish I could, but I'm volunteering today. You guys have fun, take pictures!" She drained her glass in a gulp and set it in the sink, avoiding his eyes.

"Yeah, sure," he responded, frowning slightly. Shrugging it off, he headed over to the fridge and pulled it open, scanning the shelves. "Mind if I massacre the pad thai?"

Ray shook her head. "Not hungry, go ahead. I'll just…" She waved to the door that led to the bedrooms, then followed through. "Awkward," she whispered, just out of earshot. Then she sniffed. With a groan, she veered into the bathroom to grab more tissues, pressing them against her nose. "This better be worth it," she muttered, heading into her room to change.

""""""""""""""""""""""

Sam twitched and groaned when Dean's alarm went off. He made a truly pitiable attempt to burrow into his pillow, but Dean was unmoved.

"Wakey, wakey!" He shouted. With a startled "Gah!", Sam scrabbled into a sitting position and blinked hugely at him, breathing fast.

"…How long was I out?" He asked, wiping a hand down his face. Dean glared at him from the room's single table. "What?"

"There's a hunt here, huh?"

Sam closed his eyes. This tone of voice to Dean was like the earthquake that comes before a volcano explodes.

"REALLY, Sam? These articles are ten years old! There is literally no connection between any of them! No one died, no one disappeared for longer than a week, a few sick kids got healthy! Big whoop! And you've doodled something about ice cream in the margins for no apparent reason. What the hell, dude?"

Sam swung his legs over the bed and went to shuffle all the papers together, completely disregarding any sense of order. Dean smacked his hand away and pulled a single sheet out of the stack- a printout of a school website, with a picture of kids in "School Spirit" uniforms. The picture of a little girl in blue was circled in scribbled lines of ink, over and over.

"Man, this is just fucking weird." Dean tapped the picture and squinted up at his brother. "So you'd better get explaining."

Sam's face fell into a familiar half-frown and Dean's gut twisted. His little brother should have learned by now not to make the same damn face every time he tried to lie his way out of a situation.

"It's just… One of my Stanford friends brought it up. This case from when she was a kid. And it seemed like it was starting back up again, so…." Sam widened his eyes innocently.

"Cut the crap. I could care less if it was some chick in your Art History class or a Twihard on an internet forum. There. Is. No. Case. So what if some kids ran away for a bit ten years ago? Sam, they never even found enough evidence to call it a kidnap!"

"We've done cases on less information!" Sam protested. As soon as it was out, he wished he hadn't.

"When?" Dean asked flatly. "You're the one always going on with that knowledge is power crap. Say there is a thing here, a- an abominable ice-cream man. How do we get rid of it?"

"We kill it with fire," Sam said impatiently, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Dean's eyebrows rose. His mouth twitched.

"Dude, you sound like a girl who see a spider in her room and freaks. Seriously? Kill it with fire? You're pulling this out of your ass, aren't you?" Dean's sense of humor, as always, sprung seamlessly from fury.

"Screw you," Sam muttered, sick of the conversation. Dean sobered.

"Give me one good reason we should even think of this as a case. Seriously, Sam. One reason or we're gone." Dean hardened his voice, slipping into the Sergeant tone that had always worked for Dad. Predictably, Sam deflated.

"FINE! Fine… The person I was talking to… she was one of the kids taken. It was definitely a kidnap, and I found the articles about kids getting better… it happened at exactly the same time, Dean. There's no such thing as a coincidence in hunting, remember?" Sam glanced at his brother, who looked unimpressed. He sighed. "She has powers… That good enough?"

"Powers? What, like-" Dean wiggled his fingers in the oddly universal way people tend to wiggle their fingers when they want to reference magic. Sam spent a moment trying to parse the origin of the mime- crystal ball? I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too?- before shaking his head.

"More like… Telepathy? Sorta like Andy near the end," he clarified.

"So we've got a Professor X on our hands. Please tell me she's bald and in a wheelchair, it's the only thing that'll make this better," Dean deadpanned.

"No, I can't remember her face, but she was… young?" Sam shook his head. Trying to think back to the most recent dream was like trying to mentally swim through a pool of mashed potatoes, where his brain was both the swimmer and the potatoes.

"So Jean Grey wants us to kill the ice cream man with fire. And you went to school with her but she's young and faceless." Dean leveled a "what the fuck" look at Sam and shook his head. "Should have given you the don't-talk-to-Internet-strangers speech more often when you were a kid," he concluded. Sam snorted, but didn't try to deny it. Creepy internet stranger was better than the truth. "Our lives, man," Dean lamented. "I swear someone is always screwing with us. Anything else I should know?" The unspoken 'anything else you been keeping from me?' was so loud it could have been shouted.

"Um… No?" Sam hunched his shoulders defensively- an odd pose for a guy taller than six feet. Dean eyed those shoulders and deliberately leaned back in a relaxed pose.

"You're paying for dinner," he informed his cringing brother. "And for every gas stop meal we get on the way to Bobby's… after we finish this case." Sam pouted- there was no grown-up word for the expression on his brother's face- but his shoulders loosened.

"Yeah, sure." Sam picked up the articles and walked over to his duffel, crouching to unzip it. He groped through the haphazardly folded clothes until his fingers met his laptop case.

"And Sam?" Dean's voice caught him red-handed, if unsure what he was guilty of. "If you ever try to keep something like this from me again…" he trailed off meaningfully. Sam grinned down at his duffel, hiding the expression. Vague, unfinished threats were basically hugs of forgiveness in the Winchester family.

One of the scratchy pillows from the beds thwacked him powerfully on the back of the head. "Come on, Sammy! Fajitas and churros ain't gonna eat themselves!"


End file.
